I Say Yes to Life: The Affirmation Project

By David Jones

David Jones' stories and affirmations, cultivated through the tremendous challenges of his recovery journey, have inspired hundreds of people in classes and on social media for over a decade. These affirmations - powerful statements of intention - can be used to transform anxiety, self-doubt, and shame by anyone recovering from trauma and a

• Language: English
• Publisher: David W Jones
• Release date: Nov 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781088077238

David Jones

David Jones is a writer living in Yorkshire England.His professional career started as a playwright winning a writer's development grant from The Arts Council England Yorkshire in 2005 and a place on the Yorkshire Arts Circus Writer Development Program in 2006.Since then he has written and had produced plays such as Pimlico - a hard hitting look at the plight of Asylum Seekers in Britain; Full English - highlighted the subject of schizophrenia in the black community; The Cleaner - A tough drama centered on the effects of child abuse and Spike now released and available on Amazon.He was the principal writer of the 'made for Internet' soap drama, 'Today and Tomorrow' produced by 2b Acting Productions, one of the first online TV series.David continues to write for 2b Acting productions.

Book preview

Foreword

In thirty years of recovery and twenty-eight years of leading retreats and working in homeless shelters, mental health centers, inpatient treatment, and private practice, I have met few who shine as brightly as David Jones. His endurance, creativity, generosity, and spiritual depth are extraordinary.

He brought the same qualities to his addiction, of course, for what is addiction if not a fiercely determined response to the suffering of our lives? The ferocity of his suffering was visible in the hard light gleaming from his eyes when I first met him. Terrible loss, abuse, and a family history of addiction had driven him into a desperate and chaotic search for relief, security, belonging, and control for many years. There was something else in his eyes, though: a bright coal of self-love and tremendous courage glowed brightly under the ashes.

I was there as David realized his strength and identified the ways that power had been misdirected by trauma and addiction. I watched as he questioned the stories that reinforced those patterns. I cheered as he began to recognize and receive the love and support that waited for him. I stepped back in wonder as David performed a miracle; he realized that he had the power to make a different choice. He began saying yes to his own life one day at a time.

One of the most remarkable things about David’s journey is his mastery of that most difficult art: creating a recovery path that is uniquely his while also drawing upon the enormous wisdom, support, and clear-eyed feedback of his trusted recovery team and the twelve-step tradition. Too often, addicts in early recovery are taught to mistrust their inner compass instead of cultivating their relationship with the voice of truth inside them. Too often, they are shamed for their addiction instead of understanding the real wisdom and deep unmet needs behind their self-destructive behavior. David did the hard work of learning to discern the voice of his heart from the voice of his addiction and discovered the extraordinary courage to follow it. He gleaned the essential truths from every spiritual tradition he encountered, integrated them into a cohesive and potent spiritual discipline, and leaned into the wealth of loving support and guidance around him. He created LGBTQ recovery groups, founded an intentional recovery community, and began sharing his experience, strength, and hope with countless students in his trauma-informed yoga classes in communities, churches, and treatment centers. Every time he shared his experience, his yearning to share it grew, and he began creating this book.

Over the last twenty years, I have had the joy and honor of bearing witness to David’s miracle. With this book in your hands, you have the same opportunity. You will walk beside him as he makes the life-changing discovery that none of us are alone or can recover alone; we need each other like we need the air we breathe. You will discover with him what it truly means to love oneself and to open oneself to the grace of one’s life. You will realize with him the power to re- direct your thoughts, your love, and your strength towards lifting yourself up, reaching out, and cultivating – one choice at a time – a life of sobriety, self-care, and passionate service.

These pages hold yet another gift for you, one that David has devoted his whole life to cultivating. He has mastered the power of affirmation. Many think of affirmation as an effort to convince oneself of something that isn’t true. Other people believe that affirmations are like magic charms to conjure a new reality into being. David’s life and work demonstrate the true power of affirmations: they affirm what is deepest and truest in our own experience, nourishing those truths and bringing them into our activities and relationships, creating lives that reflect our most passionately held values and dreams.

What is deeply and completely true in your own heart? How do those truths want to be lived out in your life? What hidden reservoirs of strength lie hidden within you? How can you cultivate the patient self-love to answer all these questions? I have seen David Jones live his way into the answers. I have watched the self-love which powers his recovery overflow into the lives of everyone he encounters, inspiring and transforming us all with a vision of what our lives can be and the love that waits to embrace us. I am excited for you to discover your truth and affirm that truth with your whole life.

Congratulations on finding this book. May the greatness within us become the lives we share.

Hunter Flournoy, MFA, MS, LPC

Introduction to The Power of Affirmation

I’d like to invite you on a journey to a new way of thinking and being in your life through the power of affirmation. This journey has the power to change our perceptions of ourselves, our world, our self-talk, our emotions, and our attitudes. It will affirm our strengths, resilience, abilities, and worthiness of being loved. We will move from negativity to positivity, from putting ourselves down to lifting ourselves up. Together, we will explore how I have overcome challenges, changed belief systems, and turned around my self-hatred – and how you can do the same in your own life. Every affirmation will take you one more step to greater self-love.

My History

To help you better understand the difference affirmations have made in my life, I should tell you where I started. I didn’t think I would make it this far. I experienced the trauma of sexual abuse and abandonment as a child and a teenager, growing up in a household with two alcoholic parents. When I was ten, my mother had an aneurysm and spent the remaining twenty-three years of her life in a nursing home. The course of my life changed in dramatic ways, landing me in a British boarding school in Australia for five years and bringing an emotionally abusive stepmother into my life.

In response, I cultivated any addiction that would make me feel better, different, or numb, and developed self-harm behaviors like cutting and overworking myself to injury or exhaustion. Codependency almost killed me many times as I went from one dangerous relationship to another, trying to take care of myself by taking care of others. I had no idea how to care for myself or even be alone. As a result, I had a lot of pain to medicate, and my physical scars tell a story of pain, self-hatred, and anger turned inward. I have been close to death many times, including twice by my own hands.

My recovery journey began over thirty years ago. I did my best to work recovery the way other people told me to in the twelve-step rooms. For some people, the rules and regulations of twelve-step recovery are just what they need; for me, the most valuable part of the program was the invitation to take what you need and leave the rest. As a trauma survivor, I didn’t have a voice and didn’t feel as if I had any power. To heal, I needed to be the author of my recovery and discover that power. To Thine Own Self be True is engraved on every twelve- step medallion. These words have guided my life.

Once I discovered the strength of my voice and my power to choose, I was able to open myself up to guidance in my recovery; I recognized that my best thinking had gotten me where I was in my addiction. Guidance takes many forms and can be different for every person. My connection with God, spiritual practices, and people further ahead of me in recovery helped me the most.

In the fall of 2002, after two years of IV drug and crack cocaine use, I found myself in middle Tennessee at The Recovery Ranch, where I stayed for three and a half months. My time at the Ranch was the beginning of my deeper dive into healing and recovery because it was there that I discovered the teachings and practices that would mold the next two decades of my life and help me create and thrive in a life that I love and enjoy. I asked for help and guidance, and God, in His grace, led me to co-create the community of Laughing Winds, a support system of sober people trying to live authentic lives. I began working on a deeper level to make my recovery path my own, incorporating AA, Toltec Wisdom, and Yoga into my life. All these working together made me into the sober, solid man I am today.

The Pillars of my Recovery

Looking back now, I recognize six gifts that became the pillars of my recovery program.

The first two came from my parents. My Dad blessed me with his optimism, strength, and shining spirit; from him, I learned to believe in the power